Start-up Ready for the new generation of mobile communications

The future mobile radio standard 5G will be the first to enable mobile radio networks by private operators. When setting up these networks, security aspects must be taken into account from the very beginning, as it is difficult to make them secure retrospectively. Radix Security has specialised in making 5G security accessible and helping campus network operators build and operate their networks securely. Company founder Dr. David Rupprecht tells us about the spin-off from the Faculty of Computer Science at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, in Rubin, the Ruhr University's science magazine.

Numerous interfaces and security risks

When you pull out your smartphone to do a quick search for directions or to find out when the next bus is running, you usually get an answer right away. The processes in the background run so fast that you hardly notice they exist. But the data being transmitted has to cross a lot of interfaces. To ensure that all these processes run smoothly, thousands of pages of standard specifications have been compiled. They contain errors, both large and small, that present security gaps – and this is what David Rupprecht focuses on in the first place.

Together with his colleagues, Rupprecht has already exposed a number of vulnerabilities in older standards. Currently, he is primarily interested in the future 5G standard. “5G is particularly interesting, because it opens up many new application possibilities, such as internet of things (IoT). Cars will be able to communicate with traffic lights, factories will improve their internal networks, and critical infrastructure will gain new networking capabilities.” In the case of factory networks, it’s robots and industrial equipment that will be connected via a local 5G campus networks – and for the first time by private operators. “This means that everyone can suddenly become a network operator,” stresses David Rupprecht. The responsibility for the secure implementation and configuration of 5G networks now lies with the private operators.

Security for campus networks

Supported by the start-up incubator Cube5 at Ruhr University Bochum and its Dutch counterpart Mercator Launch at Radboud Universiteit, David Rupprecht, together with Professor Katharina Kohls, set up the company Radix Security. Radix Security is committed to making 5G security accessible and helping campus network operators build and operate their networks securely. The Radix Security test tool allows the user to test components for their security properties in a way that goes beyond the standard. “In addition to testing, we need to enable a campus network to detect and defend itself against attacks,” concludes David Rupprecht. To this end, Radix Security is developing an attack detection system tailored to campus network operators.